July 2002 News

• e-Government shelves e-mail
• Come fly with me - just don't get too close
• Breakdown at the RAC
• Commerce One changes tack
• GE dumps its B2B business
• Extending Moore's law
• The marriage has happened and ...

e-Government shelves e-mail

Come fly with me - just don't get too close

A Boeing 777 from Rio @ 34000ft and a Boeing 737 from Valencia @ 32000ft got within 2 miles separation even though on the ground £623M worth of air traffic control system was supposed to stop this happening. The trainee controller gave instructions and the planes got closer. The instructor notices (GOOD) and moves in to help. Unfortunately the override system did not work (BAD). Yes its that well known Swanwick soap with another interesting, adrenaline packed, story line.

Breakdown at the RAC

The new £7.5M Windows-based auto-despatch system failed leaving many motorists stranded at the side of the road. As systems become more integrated the importance of application management increases and the consequences of failure more severe.

Commerce One changes tack

The new direction is as a provider of Web services integration software. Commerce One was one of the B2B pioneers and was hit by the downturn in the market. The question is whether they have entered the integration business too late. Other vendors already offer products to cover most of the requirements. It will also be interesting to know what SAP intend to do with its 20% stake, especially as it will be competing with the SAP Portal offering.

GE dumps its B2B business

Is this the beginning of the end for EDI? The GE GXS business has been sold to buyout fund Francisco Partners for $800M who want to build up the brand. This is an interesting move as B2B is beginning to stabilize and the XML services are growing. With more than 100000 trading partners the GE decision must mean that the business exchanges will be entering a new phase.

Extending Moore's Law

They said it could not continue. They said that the laws of physics would be the barrier to further chip density. Stephen Chou of Princeton University didn't listen so he has been able to develop a technique involving stamping out chips with a quartz chip which could enable the designers to continue developing faster chips for several "Moore" years.

The marriage has happened and ....

HP & Compaq are now one. They have combined the product lines and merged the services and the statements have been both clear and logical. As predicted, most of the benefits will come from a reduced workforce. The engagement model is still a little confusing - Compaq had evolved to a focused model whilst HP had a product bias. Corporate customers will not want hordes of salesmen so the new HP will have to reconsider its stance. It will be an interesting marriage to observe how the two cultures get on together. It will be a little Darwinian !!!

Shorties

• Beware of people buying you drinks in the pub. If you are an IT expert you might be the target of some high-tech criminals.
• The Egg bank research indicates that more than 50% of the UK users never change their password and most only have one for everything and its their favorite celebrity or football team.
• As the IT marketplace begins to return to some semblance of normality the heavy losses will have to be balanced by higher prices. Make sure these are baked into the budget or it will get very messy in 2003.
• Western Europe server sales have reduced by 22.5% in Q1, 2002. The unit shipments have declined by 6.5%.
• Intel pulls the plug on its web hosting business because of the poor market outlook.
• Russia enters the offshore software development community. Moscow rates are £15-£22 / hour compared with UK rates of £30-£50 / hour. Moscow rates are up tp 3 x higher than other parts of Russia.
• Macro test poses problems for StarOffice. While StarOffice can import documents from MS it cannot handle the VB-based macros. Outlook has similar problems with its competitive products.